The Origin and Evolution of Life:
A Product of Cosmic, Planetary, and Biological Processes

This illustration represents the host of natural phenomena which
collectively have created life as we know it. Life apparently
requires a solar system having a planet with "suitable" conditions
such as liquid water, nutrients, and sources of energy. Interactions
between various substances and energy yielded the autocatalytic
systems capable of passing information from one generation to the
next, and the thread of life began. This thread, which has been
maintained by DNA molecules for much of its history, is shown weaving
its way through the primitive oceans, gaining strength, and gradually
acquiring the lineages of organisms whose descendants populate our
modern biosphere.Plants and animals then moved onto the land, where
more advanced forms, including humanity, ultimately arose. Finally,
assisted with a technology of its own making, life has reached back
out into space to understand its own origins, to expand into new
realms, and to seek other living threads in the cosmos.

Click on the image above to learn about these phases
in the emergence of life...

NASA's Planetary Biology Program

The Planetary Biology Program is chartered to investigate
the origin and evolution of life. This research combines the
talents of biologists, chemists, physicists, geologists, and
astronomers into a multidisciplinary program which utilizes
NASA's unique capabilities for technology, space flight, and
exploration.

This Program's major areas of research address the
chemistry of biologically important elements and compounds
in interstellar space and in the solar system, the processes
on the prebiotic Earth leading to the origin of life, the
evidence in fossils and microorganisms regarding early
evolution, and the search for life elsewhere in the cosmos.